Nonlinear phase noise mitigation in phase-sensitive amplified transmission systems

We investigate the impact of in-line amplifier noise in transmission systems amplified by two-mode phase-sensitive amplifiers (PSAs) and present the first experimental demonstration of nonlinear phase noise (NLPN) mitigation in a modulation format independent PSA-amplified transmission system. The NLPN mitigation capability is attributed to the correlated noise on the signal and idler waves at the input of the transmission span. We study a single-span system with noise loading in the transmitter but the results are expected to be applicable also in multi-span systems. The experimental investigation is supported by numerical simulations showing excellent agreement with the experiments. In addition to demonstrating NLPN mitigation we also present a record high sensitivity receiver, enabled by low-noise PSA-amplification, requiring only 4.1 photons per bit to obtain a bit error ratio (BER) of 1 x 10(-3) with 10 GBd quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) data. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America